[This HAPPENED on Tuesday 05 AUGUST 2014, but I’m WRITING this on 07 OCTOBER 2014. Enter at your own risk.]
Our last full day in Italy was spent lounging about, and cooking and eating a fancy dinner for and with Finnur, who’d turned forty years old the week before. (14 images total.)
Emma playing with a paper roll. She still thinks paper is for eating.
[This HAPPENED on 04 August 2014, but was written 29 SEPTEMBER 2014. Yeah.]
Our destination on this lovely Monday was the small Mediterranean beach-town of Varazze. The plan was to at least stick our toes into the water, but preferably spend the day at the beach. The drive there took a little over an hour on the awesome highway-system. Bizarrely, the road was littered with tunnels of varying lengths. I vaguely recall someone counting over thirty of them on the way back! (39 images total)
Bjarki enjoying life in front of the TV in the early morning. I think his favorite show was Peppa Pig.
[This HAPPENED on 03 August 2014, but was written 24 SEPTEMBER 2014. Take everything with a grain of salt!]
This semi-clouded Sunday, Holla and I ventured out with the kids to visit a near-by water-slide park, which turned out to be CLOSED!! No, there was no notice on their Facebook page, or on their website. All I could find was that they ‘reserved the right to close if the weather wasn’t good enough’. We were so shocked we didn’t even take a photo of the closed-waterpark-at-a-distance-across-an-access-bridge-that-was-closed… but Google Street View did: (49 images total)
This is as close as we got to the Asti-Lido waterpark. Oh, and there were NO SIGNS directing us how to get there. Maybe that was the hint that it was closed?
[This HAPPENED on 02 August 2014, but was written 10 SEPTEMBER 2014. Take everything with a grain of salt!]
After all the driving we did to get to Italy from France the day before, the first full day in Italy was designated quiet! So we just hung out in and by the mini-mansion. It was neither terribly hot nor humid, just somewhat. It was nice! (27 images total)
Ah, wildlife!
[Written 26 August 2014. Yay, same month!]
On this lovely Friday we packed up all our stuff and Finnur took the kids on a RPG-related shopping excursion while I cleaned the house. Cleaning when it’s warm is no fun. Ugh. Really no fun. It did get done though.
We were finally all set to go at 12:30, and drove an hour south-east to Chambery, where we ate a late lunch. We got back on the road without looking into any of the shops I wanted to visit, and continued driving south-east-ish towards Asti in Italy.
Of course, this first Friday in August is a popular travel day, so we had to wait in traffic for almost an hour before we got to enter the tunnel that goes between France and Italy, but aside from that, the drive went relatively smoothly. (I think that was the only traffic jam?)
We met up with our friends, Holla and Óli, at a supermarket in Asti to buy groceries. They’d left their house in Chambery about the time we departed Lyon, so they arrived at the house we’d rented ahead of us, which was great because we were running quite a bit behind schedule, and the lady with the keys had dinner plans.
Anyway, onto pictures! (32 imagest total)
Finnur: “A small shop in Lyon, France, displaying piles and piles of… well, stuff really. Note the chair in the photo. It is probably the only thing not for sale – it’s where the salesperson sits. “
[Written 25 AUGUST 2014. I hope.]
While visiting a website for Things to do with kids in Lyon, I saw that there was an ‘adventure garden‘ right by the church on the hill, where people can climb in trees, over rope bridges, etc.
Sadly, my right heel was still busted, so I figured I had no business climbing in trees. Instead, Finnur and I split the kids between us for the afternoon. He took the big kids to the adventure garden around lunchtime, while I had Emma and we visited a couple of playgrounds post-nap.
The big kids LOVED the adventure garden so much that they claimed it was the best thing they did on the entire trip!
Once the tired climbers returned around dinner-time, I attempted to go shopping, but finding a place to eat dinner, and then eating it took up so much time that there was no shopping. Boohoo. (Previously I’d squeaked out 45 minutes at one of the H&M stores, while Finnur shopped for groceries, and that was it for clothes shopping until the day we flew back to Iceland!) (21 images total and 1 video)
[Written 25 AUGUST 2014. In the daytime!]
This Wednesday began relatively quietly, but after Emma’s nap we piled everybody into the car and drove to the old part of Lyon to visit the Cinema and Miniature Museum, which was highly ranked on TripAdvisor. After our visit, we walked around a tiny bit while I consulted the TripAdvisor app on my phone for where to eat because there was a ton of restaurants, and hard to tell which had good food vs. being tourist traps. (65 images total!)
Emma playing!
[Written 24 AUGUST 2014. School starts tomorrow!]
Finnur turned 40 years old and our collective gift to him was not going anywhere for a whole day, except I took the kids on a playground/bakery/grocery store walk before lunch. (15 images total)
Finnur the birthday boy with his mini-cake from the awesome local bakery.
[Written 24 AUGUST 2014. It’s a good memory exercise!]
Although the day before was ‘active’, this Monday was also an ‘active’ day (two ‘active’ days in a row are generally a no-no).
I can only blame myself because I’d told Anna we’d visit the Lyon aquarium on some previous day, and then backtracking when the timing didn’t work out, promising we’d do it, say, on Monday.
First though we had to get lunch, and (the royal) we decided to try the famous Brasserie Georges, which is the oldest brasserie in the city, and one of the largest in Europe (according to wikipedia). (23 images total)
Can’t forget the biggest news of the day, which was Bjarki losing his first upper front tooth (both the lower ones are gone)!
[Written 23 AUGUST 2014. It’s quiet here.]
Our friends, Holla and Óli, were in the area with their kids and Óli’s mom at the same time we were. (By ‘the area’ I mean they were a one hour drive away from us, in Chambéry.) They wanted to check out Lyon though, so we planned to go visit the Lyon zoo, and then maybe the hilltop church.
It was a super-sunny day, and pretty warm too, so we weren’t the most energetic people ever, but the day mostly went fine. (31 images total)
Three kids and a piano. So quiet!